How Square Learned to Stop Worrying About Bitcoin and Love the Blockchain

Square made a splash when it announced it would sell bitcoin in its Cash app, but failed to make much money doing so, it was revealed yesterday. But working with the cryptocurrency taught the payments company quite a bit about blockchain technology, and how it ends up employing that knowledge may be the true payoff from this failed (from an investor standpoint) adventure in bitcoin. CEO Jack Dorsey announced yesterday on Square's 1Q earnings call that it had facilitated the sale of $34.1 million worth of bitcoin. At an average price of $10K per coin, that means Square sold just over 3,400 bitcoins in the quarter. (These numbers are approximate.) The company paid $33.9 million for the coins, for adjusted revenue of just $200K. This would indicate the enterprise is currently operating at a loss, which is a familiar story for Square. Square stock was down 6% at the opening bell. Marketwatch reported the following about the earnings: Square Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told reporters on a media call after the results came out that the $200,000 spread flows to the company’s adjusted revenue. “It’s effectively a margin that we’re putting in place to give us some cushion for when a customer makes purchases and we have to go into the market to buy the bitcoin,” she said. There can be some “fluctuations” in the “dynamic” market for bitcoin, she said. Friar urged reporters to think about bitcoin in the larger sense of “how we monetize the Cash app,” referring to Square’s peer-to-peer money-transfer app where the bitcoin trading takes place. Square Capital, the company's lending arm for its small-business customers, reported loans to more than 50,000 businesses totaling $339, up 35% year-over-year. In the previous quarter, Square reported loans to 47,000 merchants totaling $305 million, making for an 11.5% QOQ increase. The company has built up a great deal of expertise in blockchain technology via its involvement in bitcoin, Dorsey said, and in the end, this could be where Square discovers value in the broader cryptocurrency space. Dorsey said: And in terms of the blockchain, yes, I mean, there is no other technology apart from artificial intelligence and machine learning and deep learning that affects the way we can operate our service and the way we can build our business... And because we are connected directly to the blockchain and using it every single minute of every single day, we have been able to learn quite quickly and how it could impact the rest of our business as well. There is certainly a ton of applications around creating more efficiencies within our business, but also creating new opportunities as well. So, we are still in a learning phase of where we can apply it in the right way because we don’t just want to purely apply the technology where it doesn’t fit but making sure we are actually solving a real need and a real problem whether that be internal or external. But, we do carry a lot of — we do have a lot of excitement for what it can do. And we are building a significant expertise within the Company to do that. Dorsey also elaborated on Square's bitcoin strategy more in the Q&A, again stressing the blockchain learnings: In terms of the strategy long-term, the first step we wanted to take is to learn as quickly as possible, to offer something that people would find valuable. And we do see that — we did see — reason we started this initially is because we did see cash customers wanting to buy crypto, utilizing their cash accounts. So, we made that a little bit easier. But we want to learn what this meant for us as a company and also for our industry and really pushed ourselves a lot to make sure that we were best in class in terms of providing a simple easy of exchange and then we can build off of that. There is obviously a lot of benefits as more of the spreads and we can better utilize blockchain technologies, both internally and externally. But also made — the strategy was to provide a simple service that people would value and also be able to learn as quickly as possible. So, we’ve become experts in how this technology is going to impact our world and our industry and also that we continue to be leaders in that. The payments industry as a whole is seeing little innovation in blockchain , making Square a notable exception. Citron Research made waves with a negative tweet about Square recently, including the much-quoted phrase "WallSt drunk on bitcoin nonsense." In other words, if Square's bitcoin play was a move to please investors, that didn't happen. $SQ Short term tgt $30 started as innovative pymt co. - now just another processor. 15x rev growing slower than $FB . Collection of yawn businesses. WallSt drunk on Bitcoin nonsense, SQ-Cash to BTC trading has been insignificant. Even w/ hyper growth still 40% too rich

— Citron Research (@CitronResearch) April 30, 2018 Bitcoin is currently up 3% on the day, according to CoinMarketCap, trading at just under $10K as of 11 AM ET.

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How Square Learned to Stop Worrying About Bitcoin and Love the Blockchain

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